14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Canadian mobile phone maker BlackBerry officially kicked off the rollout of the BlackBerry OS 10.2.1 update to the owners of Z10, Z30, Q10, and Q5 smartphones out there, enabling them, among other things, to easily install and run Android apps.
The feature is available courtesy of a new Android runtime included in the platform, opening the door to a great deal of new applications for all BlackBerry 10 users out there.
The tricky part, however, is to grab hold of Android software to install on these handsets, though there are several ways in which users can do that very easily.
One of these involves finding APK files (Android apps have this extension), downloading them, and then manually installing them on your handsets.
APKs might be hard to come by sometimes, though you can use web search engines to find some of them. In fact, the guys over at N4BB even created a so-called Android APK download center, listing a series of popular apps for users to easily grab.
As soon as the file has been downloaded on the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, simply click on it to open it, which will trigger the installation process. When this step is over, tap the app to run it.
Another way to download and install Android apps on devices with OS 10.2.1 is to get the Amazon Appstore up and running on your smartphone.
For that, you should head over to the Amazon Appstore download page on the browser of your smartphone and hit the “Download the Amazon Appstore” button.
You will be prompted to set the download location and file name but, as CrackBerry notes, you can simply hit the save button located in the top right corner of the screen. Then, click on the APK when the download has been completed to install it.
After installation, you’ll have to run the Amazon Appstore client and login into the portal. Provided that you don’t have an account there, simply hit the Create account button and follow the registration steps.
The mobile client will allow users to browse through a great deal of Android apps and easily download them and even purchase paid ones. Apparently, over 90 percent of Android software available in Amazon’s portal should work on BlackBerry handsets.
One thing that should be noted here, however, is the fact that the Amazon Appstore might not work as expected on all BlackBerry 10 devices. In fact, many users have been complaining about it getting stuck at different stages during launch.
At the same time, users should also keep in mind that not all Android apps are supported by the BlackBerry OS 10.2.1 platform, such as Google Services (and many applications that take advantage of it, for that matter).